


Talentless hack

by Multifandom_damnation



Series: When all the chips are down [1]
Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Developing Friendships, Falling In Love, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mutant Powers, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Slow Build, Team Dynamics, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24937570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: He didn’t quite enjoy John’s whole deal with ‘training’. Marcos didn’t need to train. He wasn’t a child who had just discovered their power for the first time and needing help controlling them. He’d had his powers since he was thirteen, and he didn’t need anybody, especially someone like John, to teach him how to use them. Finding a positive thought to focus on was just stupid.But finding something to fight for? He could do that.
Relationships: Lorna Dane & Marcos Diaz & John Proudstar
Series: When all the chips are down [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804894
Kudos: 4





	Talentless hack

**Author's Note:**

> Guys?? I fucking?? Love Marcos?? My two favourites are Marcos and John, I'm not going to lie. I just really wanted to see the background of how the underground was made! I know we've seen a little bit, but there's some things that are mentioned that are so curious? Like what happened to Marcos's mother?? I want to know!! This was also just an excuse to write Gus, who I love, and more of Sonya and more of everyone being happy and healthy and calm. I don't know!! I just have so many feelings and thoughts about these broken, sad mutants. This fic was so much longer than I was wanting it to be, but I like how it turned out! But anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it, despite there being only like, five-ish of you. Am I all that's left? I hope not.

The Mutant Underground was just different enough from the cartel that Marcos felt good with the change of pace but not too different that he felt out of his depth.

Maybe that had something to do with the dangerous woman who was in charge of seeing him around the place, with the knives in her belt and the dark hair and the eyes that told Marcos that he should be afraid of her. Well, maybe it had something to do with her, or maybe it had _everything_ to do with her.

This place was nice- or, well, as nice as you could get for an underground mutant group full of ex-military and criminals and former cartel members. There were people here, all mutants, all people that Marcos didn’t mind. John’s best friend Gus made him a little uneasy because he didn’t like the implications of what he could do, but he was a nice guy. Little kids too, young and inexperienced and trying to find their footing in a world that wanted them dead. He pitied them. He had already gone through the hard stages of life, the stages of not understanding why people would throw rocks at him in the streets or spit on him or chase him down streets barefoot. He was older now, and he knew more.

Though, he didn’t quite enjoy John’s whole deal with ‘training’. Marcos didn’t need to train. He wasn’t a child who had just discovered their power for the first time and needing help controlling them. He’d had his powers since he was thirteen, and he didn’t need anybody, especially someone like John, to teach him how to use them.

He stood outside with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels while John watched him expectantly. A few paces away were some wooden crates with red ‘X’s painted on their faces. “Well?” John asked. “Are you going to show me?”

Marcos shrugged. “You know what I can do. I know what I can do. It’s no secret.”

“Yeah, but knowing and seeing are two different things,” John insisted. “So show me.”

Frustrated, Marcos waved his hand at the partially collapsed building, where a couple of kids were weaving in and out of crumbled columns as they took advantage of the rare moment of peace to play in the rubble, overseen by Sonya. “Look, man, I understand that you’re just trying to look out, but you’re better off helping those younger kids. I don’t need any advice.”

The exasperation coming from John was palpable, almost coming off of him in waves. “You don’t even want to humour me a little bit?”

“It’s not the kind of thing that I can just humour you with,” Marcos said. “It’s not a simple light show that I can do just for entertainment. It’s dangerous and deadly. I can really hurt someone.”

John closed his eyes slightly. “Alright. Fine. Let’s try something different.” John shifted so he could lean against the fence that Lorna had helped him reinforce, a couple of paces away from the treeline with branches and leaves hanging over the top. “How do you trigger your powers?”

“Trigger my powers?”

“Yeah. You know, what do you tap into to get them to work? What kind of emotion, what kind of memory?”

Marcos frowned. The concept was just confusing to him. “I don’t ‘tap into’ anything. I want them to work and they work. They’re useful. When I have a job to do, I do it.” Marcos couldn’t imagine it any differently. He had never used his powers for anything other than survival and getting a job done. The very thought that it could be anything different perplexed him. Why would you ever want to do something like that? Marcos considered his mutation a curse, always had and always would, and the last thing he wanted to do was put any kind of thought or trigger or emotion to it. “Why? Do you?”

A strange yet subtle looked came over John’s face and he brushed his hair away as he shook his head. “My mutation is different from yours. I can’t turn mine on or off, it’s a constant thing, always happening. But I think about positive things, things that make me happy. I’m not sure if it really helps, but it’s a good exercise regardless. But maybe that’s something we can work on. Giving your powers a positive association.”

“There’s nothing positive about being a mutant,” Marcos scoffed. “I first lit up when I was thirteen, and my life has been a living hell since then. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to glorify a curse.”

Pursing his lips, John glanced between Marcos and the targets before he crossed his arms again. “Have you got any siblings, Marcos? Family?”

“Younger siblings,” Marcos said. “My father died not long ago, and my mother died on the streets when my father kicked her out of the house for being a mutant. I was never close with my siblings. So no, no family.”

“I’ve got a younger brother. His name is James,” John said, and that surprised Marcos. John never spoke about his family. “He’s a mutant too. Our mutations are similar, except I’m a much better tracker, and he could probably lift a building from its foundations if he really tried. He’s stronger than me. But he’s who I think about. Him and my mother, who’s waiting for me back home, and my father, who fought in the Gulf war. James and my parents are my positive thoughts. I think it will do you some good to find one for yourself too.”

But Marcos could only shake his head. He had no positive thoughts, no family to tap into. He was the oldest brother, the oldest son, the biggest disappointment. His mother had been gone for so long, and she was the only light in his dark and miserable existence, but he hadn’t been given the liberty to think about her at all. Now that he was forced to think about it, he was suddenly strikingly aware that he could no longer remember his mother’s smile, the colour of her eyes, the dimple in her cheeks, the way she braided her hair over her shoulder, the way she would hold him to her chest and made all the pains go away. And that, he suspected, would be the opposite of what John might consider a ‘positive thought’.

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky to have those things,” Marcos was surprised at how bitter his voice sounded, and John frowned. “I’ve got one skill, man and that’s setting things on fire and burning things to ciders. I like what I do, and I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen. I don’t need any ‘positive thoughts’ to make my powers work. I’ve got it all sorted, with no help from you.”

“You might not need help to access them,” John insisted. “But maybe you could focus them. Precision.”

“Focus them? I don’t need that. I set things on fire, I don’t need precision for that.”

John was starting to lose steam, but he had dealt with more head-strong mutants than Marcos, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. “Maybe not. But maybe there’s more than precision. Maybe a simple positive thought could make you stronger. Lighting things on fire is easy, even I can do that, but have you ever thought about what you could do if you were stronger? There’s more to life than just burning things, Marcos. I think that there’s more than you know.”

Marcos shrugged. “Burning things is all I’ve ever known. I’ve got no other talents. My old man used to call me a talentless hack, and he was right. So maybe there’s a chance that I could get stronger, but what’s the point? What else could I possibly do? I bleed liquid flame, and my hands are as hot as a burning star. All I am is burning and fire. You don’t know anything.”

Kicking at the dirt, John tried to think. He didn’t know what else to say. Everyone else had been so easy to get through to with this sort of talk, but for some reason, Marcos just wasn’t hearing it. “You say you didn’t have a good relationship with your father. What about your mother? You smile when you talk about her. What was her mutation?”

“I don’t know. I was only young when he kicked her out, and I never remembered her mutation,” Marcos said. It was a bitter pill to swallow and a fact he had never admitted out loud before. “But she was… everything to me. She was all I ever had. But she’s dead now. There’s nothing positive about someone you love being dead.”

There was no arguing with that. “What about Carmen and the cartel?”

“Don’t mention her. Or the fucking cartel.”

His words were sharp, deep enough to cut, and John would have been taken aback if he hadn’t expected that reaction. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to try. Considering nothing else had worked today, it wasn’t too far fetched of a suggestion. But Marcos’s eyes had turned dark and stormy, and his jaw was set into a hard line, his posture stiff and uncomfortable. John knew that if he pushed any further, the whole conversation might be over, and all of this would have been for nothing.

He caught sight of a dark shape up above on the balcony of the station, and he glanced up to see Lorna, arms crossed over her chest, leaning against a column, watching the lesson unfold. She needed a haircut, and she would be the first to admit that, but it was currently the longest that John had ever seen it. He would never admit it, but he thought that it suited her. She was thinking about dying it a funky colour to match her personality, and though she had been contemplating the colour she was going to choose, John had the feeling it would be some shade of green. She had always loved green.

When she realized he was staring, she nodded to Marcos, and the unmoving, tense way he was standing, a question in her eyes. John waved her down, and when she pushed away from the column and turned around to make her way down to ground level, he pushed his hair out of his face, stuck his hands in his pockets, and waited.

Soon later, she emerged from the run-down building, Gus hot on her heels like an excited puppy, and when she passed her, Lorna got Sonya’s attention too, and Sonya ushed the children inside to be overseen by Sage for the moment, and she too followed them to where John and Marcos had been standing for the past hour.

When Marcos heard them approach, he rolled out his shoulders and turned to face them, but balked in surprise when he realized that all three of them were there, obviously not expecting as many. “Why does this feel like an ambush?”

“Because it is an ambush,” Lorna said as she crossed her arms again, seizing him up. Marcos didn’t bend under her gaze. “What are you even doing out here?”

“John’s trying to get me to think ‘positive thoughts’,” Marcos mocked, waving angrily at John with a vague hand while he stuck the other in his pocket. “Which, if you want my opinion, is a complete and utter waste of time.”

Gus raised his eyes at John. “Positive thoughts? That’s usually what you do for kids still learning how to control and understand their powers, right? How the hell is that going to help Marcos.”

“I’m not trying to train him,” John said. “I’m trying to prove something to him.”

“Of course he’s not training him,” Lorna said. “If he were, he’d have called me ages ago and I’d be throwing pipes and anvils at his head by now.”

But Marcos no longer paid attention to her and was looking at John with an ugly expression that could only be described as outrage. “Prove something to me? What the hell sort of game are you trying to play here, Proudstar?”

“Not like  _ that _ ,” John said, exasperated. “I’m trying to prove a point. About the correlation between mutant abilities and positive emotions, happy thoughts. It’s not just about learning, it’s about understanding, strengthening, sharpening. You’ve never had something like that, so you couldn’t possibly know if it’s a load of crap until you try it.”

“I don’t  _ have  _ any of those things, John. I’ve already told you. No positive thoughts.” Marcos argued.

“I could give you one,” Sonya offered genuinely, and she refused to be cowed when Marcos turned to glare at her.

Sighing again, like he carried the weight of the world, John slapped Gus on the chest with the back of his hand, and Gus raised an eyebrow at him. “Tell him,” he said. “Tell him what you think about. Why you do it. Maybe it’ll be better if it comes from one of you.”

There was a pause, and Marcos was moments away from losing his cool and turning his back on the whole discussion so he could focus on something more important than standing outside and being inspected by a bunch of people, but Lorna’s voice stopped him from going anywhere, strong and demanding as it was. “I fight for myself. My own survival is the only reason I get out of bed in the morning, because I know that if I don’t use my powers, despite all the trouble they’ve caused me, then I’m probably going to die. And if I can help other people along the way, then fine, but I don’t pretend that other people are going to look after me. If I can’t look after myself, then I won’t survive for very long. So that’s what I think about. Saving my own ass because I know that nobody is going to do it for me.”

Marcos was just going to retort and point out that there were so many people around who would look out for her and did on a daily basis from the short time he had been there, but Sonya spoke up, and with her flaming red hair and ratty purple blazer, all attention was drawn to her. “I fight for the mutants,” she said and looked over her shoulder to where the kids could still be seen through the window. “For the kids who need protecting. I get out of bed every morning for the people that still need me. For the kids who don’t get to hide in plain sight, because they don’t look like an average human, and they have to hide away for the rest of their lives. For the women who want to escape something horrible, and whose lives have been filled with pain. I make them forget. I give them hope. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that someone was hurting, someone who needed me, and there was something I could do to help, and I didn’t. So I fight for all the people that can’t.”

"Well,” Marcos said, mouth dry, and he licked his lips before he spoke. “My mother could have used you.”

There was no comment, but Sonya glanced away, and Lorna looked a little uncomfortable with the change of conversation. Marcos turned to John, and he balked. “Don’t look at me. I already told you what I fight for,” Gus was looking at him closely, and when John realized that he was watching him instead of speaking, he elbowed Gus in the side and gestured. “Go, dude.”

Slowly, Gus turned away from John and faced Marcos, and Marcos resisted taking a step back. Gus’s gaze was unnerving, and Marcos knew what he could do. Anybody who could take his mutation away, his abilities, was unnerving. “I fight for John,” he said, nodding to his friend. “I fight for Lorna. I fight for Sonya and Sage and all the other mutants. I fight for my friends, and for my family because they need me for as much as I need them. There’s no point in doing this if you don’t have anything or anyone to fight for. It was the same reason I joined the Marines with John. Because if I can protect people, no matter who they are, mutants or humans, then I’m going to do what I can.”

When it was obvious that nobody else was prepared to speak, Marcos rocked back and forth on his heels, looking at his shoes instead of meeting anyone’s gaze. Not that they were really looking at him. They were waiting for John. “Everyone needs something to fight for,” John spoke into the awkward silence. “Even you, tough guy. Maybe you don’t need positive thoughts to control your powers, but if you don’t have a reason to fight, then why are you?” He shrugged, patting Marcos on the shoulder. Marcos rocked with the strength of his touch. Even though John was being gentle, it was still much normal than the contact of a normal human. “You get me?”

“Yeah,” Marcos replied. “I get you.”

John nodded, “Good,” He pulled his arm away. “I need to get back to planning for tomorrow night. There’s a drop off happening nearby, and I might need some help setting an ambush. So try and figure out what you’re fighting for before then,” he addressed the whole group, but the final part was meant for Marcos, the smile on his lips made Marcos realize that while the words were stern in part, he meant no harm by them, and it was just a simple comment made between friends. Friends? Were they friends now? “Gus, tomorrow I’m going to need you just in case there’s…” 

They walked off, John’s arm over Gus’s shoulders, their heads bowed in conversation and after an awkward moment of silence between the three of them, Sonya turned and followed them, disappearing inside the building to rejoin the children under her charge. Then it was just Marcos and Lorna, watching after the rest of the team as they one by one vanished from view. 

“Well,” Marcos mused. “This has been fun. Best be going, trying to find my positive thoughts, something to fight for or wherever the fuck.”

They were both about to turn away from each other, walk their separate ways and probably not speak to each other for the rest of the day, when Lorna reached out to lightly wrap her fingers around Marcos’s forearm, and he flinched involuntarily at how gentle the contact was. He couldn’t remember the last him someone had touched him so kindly. “Listen,” she said, and for some reason, Marcos felt compelled to stop and listen. “I know that you think that John’s full of bullshit, and frankly, sometimes I do too, but he’s a good guy, one of the best, and he means what he says. He doesn’t do any of it to hurt you. But finding something to fight for… it doesn’t have to be a tangible thing like the rest of us. It doesn’t have to be selfish like me, or based on honour like Gus, or filled with love for family like John, or the need to protect the weak like Sonya. It doesn’t need to be anything like that. But it needs to be something personal. Fight for your mum, who you didn’t get enough time with, and who ended up like every other unlucky mutant in the sea of thousands. Fuck, fight for your _dad_ too, just to prove him wrong about all the things he said about you. It doesn’t have to be a real thing. Fight for all the people who didn’t get the chance you’ve got. For all the mutants who died, for all the mutants who will continue to die until this battle is won. Fight for the future. Whatever it is, just make sure it holds some meaning to you, and you’re not just pulling bullshit out of your ass to make John happy. Alright? We need you in this fight, and you’re no good to us if you don’t know what you’re fighting for.”

Marcos blinked. Out of all the things he had expected Lorna to say to him, that wasn’t it at all. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Thanks. I’ll uh… I’ll think about that.”

She smiled at him, timid yet polite and let go of him to turn her back and followed her friends in the opposite direction. He was a little sorry to see her go. Though his blood was as hot as a dying star and his skin radiated an unbearable heat, he found himself missing her warmth, her contact, and stuck his hands in his pockets before he could ruminate on it. 

That night, staring at the ceiling in the tiny room the Underground had provided for him, one of the few with privacy away from the prying eyes and constant noise of so many children, Marcos thought of his mother. He thought of his mother, and the way the corner of her eyes would crinkle when she smiled at him, and her laugh washed over him like honey. He remembered, dimly, sitting on the bed with her, her arms wrapped around him, him seated in her lap, as small lights like fireflies drifted around through the air and illuminated the room, and when he reached a hand out to touch them, they would swarm around his hand, dance around his head, and he would feel his mothers laugh through his back and into his chest, shaking him to his core. She was beautiful, with her messy hair after a long day of work framing her face, the way her eyes would brighten at the sight of him, and her freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks would glow faintly in the dark like stars, like constellations, innumerable and beautiful. 

Marcos remembered his father, dying in the hospital bed in a church he had sworn never to step foot into, still alive enough and with enough strength in his old bones to call him a devil, and to disown him for a second time. Marcos hadn't cared. He stopped caring for his father's approval long ago. When he had died, Marcos hadn’t mourned him other than the loss of another family member, but now that he was here, and he had survived, Marcos wished that he hadn’t died so soon and that he would have been able to live long enough to see what Marcos had become, to see how he had thrived despite his fathers best attempts at the contrary. 

He thought of Bogotá and the cardboard box that had been his home for longer than he liked to remember, and the people who would look at him with disdain and disgust, sometimes even hatred, despite knowing who he was. They had known what his mother had been, and there had been hoping amongst the community that none of Sebastian’s sons would inherit her demon blood, but word had gotten out, and now it was like Marcos was an outsider, an intruder, and they didn’t want him in their city, near their children, in their homes, even if he was only living on the streets. Some people, often mothers, would sometimes feel sorry for him and would pass him scraps of food and water and blankets when the men weren’t looking as if he were a stray dog that would die soon enough. That was the only kindness he had been shown for a very long time, and he would take what he could get.

He thought of Carmen, and the cartel, and how much happier he was now that he was free of her, no longer having to smuggle mutants and drugs through the border, no longer being used for his mutation, no longer having to endure the taunts from the other members and Carmen’s empty love that tasted bitter in his mouth. And how, if he could help it, if he were given any other chance, he would never go back to her again for as long as he lived. 

Early the next morning, before the sun had risen totally over the horizon, and the sky was vaguely painted pinks and whites and baby blues while the rest of the sky was barely beginning to wake, towards the west, Marcos was outside before anyone else was awake, by his own violation, which was a surprise and a miracle all in itself. He found himself back where he was the day before, in front of the boxes marked with targets, and he could imagine John by his side, spewing some sort of righteous, encouraging, overly-enthusiastic bullshit with that stupid grin on his face and too much kindness in his eyes. An expression that Marcos would have wanted to punch off his face if he knew it would hurt him.

He lined himself up with the targets, muttering to himself about how stupid he was before he ignited his hands in the blazing heat, the familiar warmth dancing across his skin, blinding and ferocious, and pointed them at the targets, stoic and immobile and his only company in the silence of the early morning. 

He brought his mother's face to his mind, beautiful and complex, with her glowing star-like freckles and her blinding smile and the fireflies dancing around her head, and focused extra hard on the feeling of her warm lips on his forehead in the dark of his bedroom, and all at once, he felt his hands ignite, but this time, it was different.

It wasn’t the spluttering of liquid flame, it wasn’t the bright light and flame from his palms, but from his fingers came concentrated beams of starlight, so bright it hurt even his eyes at the beginning, and it ground a great divot into the dirt. After a moment, he got used to the light, and it nearly brought him to tears when he realized that the brightness, the white light, the stunning luminance was exactly the same as his mother's freckles and the flecks of light that sparkled in her irises like glitter.

When he wiggled his fingers, the beams moved with them as his fingertips glowed red, like holding a torch under his skin, and he pointed them at the targets, and the crates exploded in shards of wood.

Marcos put his hands down, the light dying at the action, and he thought that he could hear his mother's musical laughter in his ears. The garden was covered in wooden debris and desiccated pieces of things the light had burned through and imploded, melted metal and charred objects, and his chest fluttered in surprise. Maybe he was more than just 'Marcos who liked to burn things'.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by someone clapping off to the side, and when Marcos turned to glare at them, still a little out of breath from the recent experience, he was only a little surprised to see John there, grinning from ear to ear, slowly clapping. “See? What did I tell you? Was I right, or was I right?”

Scoffing, Marcos shook his head, but couldn't stop the smile that curled across his lips. “You were right.”

“Good!” John said. “Keep practising with that. I need you for tonight, and your aim is still a little shoddy. Good work man! I’m proud of you. And you should be too.”

Marcos couldn’t help but laugh as he watched John leave, and he thought he felt his mother's arms wrap around his shoulders just like when he was little, and the familiar touch her placing a kiss to the base of his neck. And yeah- he was proud. Maybe he really _was_ more than just 'Marcos who liked to burn things'. 

It was nice to have a cause, and a home, and a family.

And he knew his mother would agree. 

**Author's Note:**

> I want to know more about Marcos's mother and John's family!! I really do! Mostly Marcos's because he's an OC of the show, and we have no other background about him! But, like, let me explain some things. 
> 
> We know that Marcos's mother was a mutant because his father gave her the same choice as Marcos- hide her mutation or leave. Now, I think her mutation was something similar to Marcos because what we know, it's often connected. Lorna has the same powers as her dad. John and his brother share the same powers. Scott Summers and Alex Summers. I think that Marcos would have similar abilities to his mother. 
> 
> And Marcos doesn't have any identifiable mutant markings other than his glowing blood, but how often does that happen, right? So I think that her markings would be glowing freckles! That would be really cute, I think, and a nice image for Marcos to carry with him.
> 
> And I think her mutation would be something docile. Marcos is very violent and dangerous. I think hers might have just been creating light, and turning them into shapes. Kinda like the D&D spell 'dancing lights' where you can turn the light you create into shapes, like hamster unicorns and stars and things. Marcos can also absorb light before he emits it right? Maybe she could just absorb light and create it, but it wasn't hot or dangerous like Marcos. I like to think that she could do that. I don't know. 
> 
> I'm not trying to say that the thing Marcos thinks of when he uses his powers is always his mother, but John said to Clarice to think of positive emotion to trigger her powers and make them stronger, so at this point, and the very beginning, I think that after using his powers for bad things for so long with the cartel, it would be nice for him to think of something like this to associate his powers with something better. What do you think?? Let me know and tell me I'm not alone here.


End file.
